


New Sensations

by Captain_Kieren



Category: Warm Bodies (2013), Warm Bodies - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt R (Warm Bodies), Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28152000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Kieren/pseuds/Captain_Kieren
Summary: After R is shot, he needs to be patched up. Missing scene.
Relationships: Julie Grigio/R (Warm Bodies)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	New Sensations

He’s been shot, but it’s not so bad. It was worth it to see the cold, blank prejudice in Mr. Grigio’s eyes burst and shatter into a million pieces of glass, like falling stars, as he lowered his gun. Sparkles of hate raining into the pits of Hell, leaving his eyes empty and wide and confused.

The Dead can’t bleed, after all. And R is certainly bleeding - fresh, hot blood gushing between his pale fingers, soaking his hoodie (it’s okay, it’s already red.)

Simple logic follows that he can’t be Dead. He’s pretty sure he learned that at some point. Logical proofs.

Givens:

  1. The Dead do not bleed.
  2. The Living do bleed.
  3. Grigio kills the dead, but not the living.
  4. R is bleeding.



Proof:

If R is bleeding, then he is not Dead. He is Living. Mr. Grigio only kills the dead, so because R is Living, he cannot kill him.

See? Simple.

And apparently, Mr. Grigio must follow that plain and simple logic because he in fact did _not_ shoot R in the head with his gun. The only thing he’s shooting R with now is suspicious glares through the rearview mirror of his big, scary Humvee.

Julie is in the front seat, next to her father. R is in the backseat. That is also okay. He doesn’t want his blood getting all over her. She’s had enough of his blood on her, frankly. Of course, at the time, it wasn’t so much “blood” as it was…zombie juice.

Same, difference. Also, he only wiped it all over her to save her life. So…worth it?

“Are you still bleeding?” Julie’s father asks. His tone is measured, not entirely unpleasant.

“Ye…yes,” R says, leaning forward and making sure to enunciate. If he’s coming to Life like Julie thinks he is, enunciation will be very important in the future.

Wow. The future. He has one of those now.

“Good,” Mr. Grigio says gruffly. Julie shoots him a look, like, _dad!_ “Sorry.”

On the one hand, getting shot in the chest hurts. Like, a lot. But on the other, it feels good to bleed. To feel pain. To feel love.

Julie rolls her eyes and glances back, checking on him. There’s a light deep in inside her eyes, like, at the same moment her father’s hate exploded into a million tiny stars, something in Julie exploded too. Something that kept her eyes dark and guarded, so frequently filling them with tears. It burns inside now. A flicker of something new.

The Humvee jolts over broken pieces of asphalt until the shadow of the Stadium swallows them up and they emerge on the other side, back into the light. Here, the going is smoother.

R leans his forehead against the window and sighs. Outside, the Living mill around looking wide-eyed and confused. They’re thinking, _are we at war again? Are the Dead here to eat us? Are we safe?_

Mr. Grigio sees it too and his natural inclination toward leadership compels him to stop the Humvee and turn to his daughter. He lowers his voice to a volume that might be considered a whisper, except that R can still hear him clear as a crystal.

“Are you okay alone with him?” he asks.

Julie’s expression is the facial equivalent of _ohhh my gooodddd!_ “Better with him than anyone else,” she says flippantly, but something in R’s chest tugs at her words. And something in her father’s face flashes, momentarily, with hurt. R feels sorry for him…sort of.

Apparently satisfied, Mr. Grigio’s door pops open and he steps out. “Our people need to know what’s happening,” he explains.

Julie nods in agreement as she slides into the driver’s seat. “I’ll take him from here.”

The door slams, but Julie doesn’t drive off immediately. She watches her father’s back shrinking into the distance, then she turns all the way around in her seat. “How you holding up, R?”

He shrugs. “Okay.”

She eyes the gushing wound accusingly, like she’s angry at it for existing. “It still hurt?”

He shrugs.

Her mouth purses. _Shrugger._

“Ye…yes. Where are we…going?”

“Clinic.” She turns back around and begins piloting the boat of a car through the precariously narrow streets of the Stadium. People are forced to flatten against the walls as she trucks through, but they don’t seem to mind. Most are too focused on what’s going on outside. All the monstrous screams, gun fire, and shouting.

If it wasn’t already the end of the world, R would say it sounds like the apocalypse.

Actually, it’s quite the opposite. The un-pocalypse.

Julie parks the Humvee haphazardly near a squat building with four mismatched walls and a tin roof. Like all the other buildings in the Stadium, it is held up by cables. To R’s admittedly inexperienced eyes, there’s nothing about this building that marks it as a clinic of any sort, but Julie says, “We’re here.”

In the time it takes R to peel himself off the seat, Julie has hopped out, slammed her door, and opened his. “Easy,” she says as he clumsily slides out of the vehicle, landing hard on his feet. It’s a new and peculiar sensation to notice his footing and balance, to feel the vibrations of an incorrect landing jolt up his legs into his back. Not too long ago, Julie stabbed him with a hunting knife and he didn’t even blink.

If she did that now, he would blink. But Julie wouldn’t do that now. She kissed him before, for like a good minute. It was…

Well, it was…

Words can’t even describe.

Julie hooks his arm over her shoulder and slides one of her own around his waist. They stumble toward the door, Julie bent with her hair falling into her eyes. R keeping a hand pressed over his still-bleeding bullet wound.

“Jesus, R,” she grumbles, trying to straighten. “I’ve seen you run. I know you’re not this clumsy... So, you mind…taking some weight?” She pushes up as he slumps into her.

“Di…dizzy. Sorry.”

As always, Julie’s reaction to hearing that he is experiencing something Living is a mix of sparkling awe and genuine concern. “You’re dizzy?”

He nods, but lifts some of his weight from Julie’s shoulder. The shift in balance sends him awkwardly toppling to the side, so he goes crashing over the short fence outside the clinic, head over heels, until his face is smushed against the floor.

The fall didn’t hurt, which is both wonderful and disappointing.

“R!” Julie says, rounding the fence, her hands fluttering like he’s a toddler and she just dropped him on his head. “Oh God, oh God, sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay,” he assures her, pushing himself. “Fall…all the time. No biggie.”

At that moment, the clinic doors bursts open and a great round woman in green scrubs appears in the doorway, glaring at the two of them. “How many times have I told you kids to knock it the hell off—” She freezes when she sees the blood smeared all over the floor of her porch and the outside walls of the clinic. Bright, red, still hot. Finger marks smeared through it.

“Please help,” Julie implores.

The round woman gapes, then nods.

* * *

The inside of the clinic is much like the outside of it. Ramshackle, dingy, looking like it’s held together by Elmer’s glue and safety pins. And it’s cold. Cold, like pain, is a new sensation. One he doesn’t particularly enjoy.

R is deposited on a steel table, his hoodie and shirt peeled off of him. Either this woman—nurse? Doctor?—doesn’t notice he looks somewhat Dead, or she doesn’t care. Probably the first one though. He finds it hard to believe she wouldn’t care that until an hour ago, he was legally, physically, and in all forms except mentally – dead.

“He was shot,” she remark, latex-gloved fingers probing the area.

It hurts, and not in a totally cool way. The newness of the sensation is wearing off now and R is discovering he is, at least, not a masochist.

Pain sucks.

“How did this happen?”

“He was outside,” Julie says hurriedly. “When the shooting was going on.”

The woman shakes her head, _a shame._ “Hand me that kit over there, Ms. Grigio.”

Julie obeys, grabbing a pale-green box off the floor and handing it to the doctor. Doctor, he has decided. While the doctor pops open the lid and shuffles through its contents, Julie’s hand slides into his own. She gives him a smile that is half-genuine and half-worried sick. Her hand feels cooler than he remembers.

“How do you feel?” she whispers. The fingers of her other hand brush away the hair from his forehead. A gentle, tender touch that she lets linger. It’s so sweet, so practically intoxicating. R almost lets his eyes drift shut.

He shrugs. “Okay.”

“Shrugger,” she whispers. While the doctor’s back is turned, Julie dips and presses her lips to his. And there it is – the feeling. Fireworks. The awkward half-beating of his groggy heart. She doesn’t smell like life energy anymore, or even really the distinct flavor of life energy that belonged to her. She has a new smell now, one that registers in the nose, not the teeth.

Soap and raspberry lip gloss. Sweat and wet clothes.

What does he smell like? Blood, mostly. Not much has changed there.

“Step back, please,” the doctor says, taking Julie’s place at his side. Suddenly, R has the urge to bite her. _Not_ because he’s Dead or Hungry – but because he was really enjoying his moment with Julie and she interrupted. That’s very rude.

Yes, it would be publicly considered ruder to let him bleed out, but still. Priorities.

No matter. Julie appears at his other side anyway and she holds his hand while the doctor cleans the wound, then her instruments, and then digs her instruments into his wound and dirties everything up again.

Now, _that_ sucks.

“R?” Julie says, voice high and urgent. Only then does he notice how stiff he is, how his fingers are gripping the edge of the table.

“I’m…okay.”

The doctor raises her eyebrows, then looks at Julie. “Is he on something? Cuz I didn’t give him anything—didn’t have anything to give—and he didn’t even make a peep.” The use of the past tense, plus the comforting _plink_ of the bullet landing in the trash can, relaxes R’s body into a puddle on the table.

“He’s just…” Julie shrugs lamely. Shrugger. “Very tough.”

“Damn.” The doctor cleans the wound again, then reaches for another tool.

R is really considering biting her. It probably wouldn’t even convert her into a zombie or anything.

That urge doubles when she produces a needle and thread from her evil, green kit.

Julie sees it too and pales. She squeezes R’s hand. “Sorry about this. Our clinics ran out of numbing agents months ago.”

“It’s okay,” he says. With clumsy fingers, he reaches for her hand. “Worth it.”

She smiles so affectionately he almost doesn’t feel the first stitch go in. “Yeah,” she says, carding her fingers through his still-damp black hair. “Totally worth it. All of it.” She looks tired, like she could sleep for a week straight. Not surprising considering everything that’s happened, but she’s powering through like a champ.

“Julie?”

“Yeah, R?”

“What happens…now?”

She regards him and chews her lower lip. Her fingers are still in his hair, tempting him to either purr or fall asleep. Or both. But a newly-un-undead zombie purring in his sleep just sounds too weird, so he forces himself to stay awake.

Eventually, Julie shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to figure it out as we go along.”

He can do that. He’s good at fumbling in the dark, and so is Julie. And it will be good to have a future. To be in motion. To have purpose again.

It will be really, really good.


End file.
